*** October 3, 2006: The latest version is 0.9.9o - read about it in this post***

If you are new to foo_pod, skip to the end of the forum for the latest development and discussion, as foo_pod has advanced quite a bit from this initial post...

http://www.tinkafoo.com/log/foo_pod.html is an excellent source of information about foo_pod, and might save you 8+ hours reading this forum trying to find the answer to a commonly asked foo_pod question.

Here is my initial release of a Foobar 0.8 component to interface with an Apple iPod. The current version (0.1) only supports read access to an iPod - namely, reading the iPod database file and building a Foobar playlist containing all of the songs contained on the iPod.

Is this useful? Maybe...

By building a playlist of all of the songs, you could take your iPod to a friend's computer and play the music and copy songs off of the iPod (by dragging the song from the playlist to a directory or the Desktop), without any additional software. This component might also be useful for people with home theater PCs - leave the iPod dock on the HTPC, sync up on your main computer, and playback directly from the iPod on the HTPC.

To use foo_pod, make sure your iPod is connected to your computer and is visible as a drive in My Computer (very important), and select Components/foo_pod/Load iPod to foo_pod Playlist. There are a few preference settings, but unless the automatic detection doesn't work, you probably won't need to change anything.

Anyway, let me know how this works out on different computers/iPods, and what features people would like to see. I would like to get Foobar->iPod writing working, but I'm pretty happy with EphPod, so we'll see what happens with that. Eventually, I would like to do something like Anapod. I actually have written a component that handles HTTP access/streaming and is more functional than Anapod, but I never updated it from Foobar 0.6...

Special thanks go to Otto42 and his excellent iPod classes. foo_pod relies heavily on Otto42's code, with some minor modifications (Otto42 - remind me to send some diffs). Also, on another thread, Scream mentioned that there is source code available for the Winamp5 plugin. I haven't tried that plugin yet, but I wouldn't mind taking a look at the source, especially for supporting write access (the posted link appears to be dead).

Ya i understand the ipod playlist action. But it still works from a database, and works best with iTunes. iTunes is entirely a databased driven program. I am interested in this kind of implementation for both the ipod plugin and Foobar. Plus, it would also be nice too see who what would browsing would be like on the ipod before loading up like 18 gigs worth of songs; you know, making sure all the tags are consistent. Cuz it seperates very distinctly, like DJ Tiesto, and DJ TiŽsto are different artists.

I doubt that foo_pod is ever going to be a full featured as iTunes. Ultimately, it will probably just be an easy way to sync a playlist, and maybe allow for some scripting control of the process.

If you need to review your music tags before syncing, you might want to consider the quite excellent ID3-TagIt. Otherwise, Foobar's playlist display and MassTagger are pretty good as well.